


Friendly Fire

by PR Zed (przed)



Category: Take That
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-27
Updated: 2013-04-27
Packaged: 2017-12-09 14:52:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/775473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/przed/pseuds/PR%20Zed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Howard and Jason have unfinished business.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Friendly Fire

"The world traveller is home."

"Hello to you too, Mark."

"You should call him."

"Did he tell you that?"

"No."

"Did he call you?"

"No."

"Then how do you even know he's home?"

"Simon rang me. Told me he'd picked Jay up at the airport."

"If he wants to see me, he knows where I live."

"Don't be that way, How. You know he wants to see you."

"How do you know I want to see _him_?"

"I know you've been a miserable bastard since he's been gone."

"Goodbye, Mark."

"Howard-"

He slammed down the phone before Mark could say another word. Not that he enjoyed being rude to Markie, but fuck, he didn't know what to think about Jason.

Six months ago he'd have been nothing but pleased to see him. But then six months ago, he'd been with Katie, and Jason had been a good friend, one of his best friends, and nothing else. Now, Katie had left him, and Jason… Jason had come over to his house to commiserate when she'd left, got pissed, kissed him, and then buggered off to Thailand or wherever the fuck it was he always buggered off to. For a month.

Bastard.

He wasn't fucking well going to call him, he wasn't fucking well going to go to see him, and he wasn't fucking well going to ask him what the fuck he'd had in mind with that kiss.

Christ, that kiss.

He wasn't fucking well going to think about that kiss, either. He just fucking wasn't.

* * *

It took less than twenty-four hours for his resolve to crumble like all those good intentions paving the road to hell. Less than twenty-four hours for him to end up standing here, hand raised, ready to knock on the door of Jason's Kensington home.

Not that he had to. Knock, that is. Because before he could knock once, the door opened, and there was Jason standing in front of him. In a few brief seconds, Howard saw a number of emotions pass across Jason's face—pleasure, relief, embarrassment, nervousness—but then his expression settled into a very Jason-like smile and he waved Howard inside.

"C'mon in, Dougie. I'm just getting the kitchen sorted. It was a state when I got back. I'll brew us up some tea." Which made Howard wonder just how quickly he'd bolted the country. Bastard.

"Forget your poncey tea. Do you have anything stronger?"

"There might be some lager in the fridge."

"That'll do."

So he leaned against the kitchen table while Jason dug into the fridge, wondering just what it was he was doing here, what he was going to say, and what he really wanted.

"Ah, here we are." Two bottles of lager were retrieved from the fridge and placed on the counter. "I'll get some pint glasses. Can you get the bottle opener? It's in the drawer by you."

Howard turned to open the drawer, and found not just the promised bottle opener, but elastics, takeaway menus for organic restaurants, a hammer, various loose batteries, and one pair of fur-lined handcuffs. 

Fucking hell.

Feeling like he had stumbled into some alternate reality, he lifted up the handcuffs with one finger and turned to Jason.

"Anything you want to tell me, Jay?"

Jason's head whipped 'round, and his face went red with embarrassment. 

"Christ, I'd wondered where those had gone," he mumbled. "Dieter must have stuck them there."

"Dieter? You've got a boyfriend named Dieter?" Howard wasn't sure what he was more pissed off about: that Jason apparently already had a boyfriend, that he hadn't told Howard about the boyfriend, that he'd kissed Howard anyway, or that said boyfriend had a naff name like Dieter.

"No! Not a boyfriend. Only saw him once or twice, and that was ages ago."

"You saw him often enough that there were handcuffs involved." Was that jealousy he was feeling? That would be stupid. He didn't want Jason like that, did he? And he certainly didn't want to use handcuffs on him. Did he?

"It was only a bit of fun." Jason reached for the silver bracelets, but Howard swung them out of his reach, brashness and anger and something that felt dangerously like arousal fizzing in his head.

"A bit of fun? With Dieter?" He could feel his breathing speed up, could see red at the corners of his vision. "Is that what you wanted when you tried it on with me? A bit of fun?"

"I wasn't trying it on with you." Jason's voice was a quiet as Howard's was loud.

"You kissed me." Howard advanced on Jason, who backed up until the cupboards stopped him.

"I didn't mean anything by it. It were only friendly."

"Friendly?" Howard moved in closer until he could feel the beating of Jason's heart in his chest, until he could practically taste the heat of his breath. "I don't know about you, Jay, but I don't kiss friends like that." The memory of that kiss hit him with such force that he experienced it all over again, the sloppy, wet power of it, tasting of wine and vodka and cigarettes.

"Howard." Jason's voice was a whisper, a warning, but Howard was well past listening.

He clutched the handcuffs in one hand so tightly he could feel the metal biting into his palm. The sensation prodded something inside him, and before he could think what a bad idea it was, before he could think at all, he'd snapped one bracelet on Jason's wrist, and snapped the other to his own.

"Howard." Jason put the palm of his free hand against his chest, but didn't push him away. He held his hand there, over Howard's heart, as he looked at him closely. Howard looked back and tried to decipher what he saw in Jason's eyes. Fear? Anger? Disappointment?

Or was it anticipation?

"Say the word, Jay." He put his own hand over Jason's, and felt a tremor that he wasn't sure was his or Jason's. "Say it, and I'll let you go, and we'll never talk about it again. Ever. That's all you need to do."

Jason didn't speak, he didn't push Howard away, he didn't strike out. He only blinked, swallowed, parted his lips ever so slightly, and then leaned in towards Howard.

The kiss was gentle at first, tentative, no stronger than the brush of an eyelash across a cheek. And this time Jason didn't taste like wine or vodka or fags. He tasted like himself, like Howard had always known he would.

He wrapped his free arm around Jason, drew him closer as he deepened the kiss. He ran his tongue over Jay's teeth, explored the sensations of the kiss, the rasp of beard, the feeling of Jay's hand on his neck. 

An increasingly irrelevant bit of his brain was telling him to slow down, to stop, but he ignored it. Because, fuck, this was Jason, and if there was one thing he knew, it was how to move with Jason.

As Jason bit down on his lip, Howard could feel the blood heating his skin, could feel the arousal pounding through his body, and he needed more. He was shoving up t-shirts, pushing down trousers until they were skin to skin, writhing against each other as if they were trying to become one creature. He wrapped a fist around both their cocks, brought them together, even as he felt Jason's nails on his back, the slight shiver of pain pushing him to even greater heights.

The world shrunk to just the two of them, time shrank to a single moment: now, and now, and now. But things were moving fast, so fast, and he was nearly there, could feel the wave of pleasure building, cresting, pulsing through him and flowing to Jason.

As the climax hit them both, Howard felt his knees tremble, felt Jason thrash against him, felt them both stumble. Then there was a crash as they hit the kitchen table on the way down, neither able to stop themselves—why the fuck had he thought the handcuffs were a good idea?—and they smashed to the floor. 

Any chance of an afterglow vanished with the pain of hitting the floor, hampered by trousers around their thighs.

As first times went, it was a complete and utter fucking disaster.

He looked at Jason, lying on the floor beside him, cock exposed, those damned always-erect nipples visible, their cuffed hands tangled beneath them, and prepared himself for the worst.

And Jason, the bastard, looked at him, wide-eyed, and then he started to laugh. He laughed until he had to take great, heaving breaths, laughed until Howard wasn't sure if he should be offended or amused.

"You don't half know how to show a bloke a good time," Jason finally choked out between the giggles.

"Fuck off," was all Howard could manage.

"I think we just did." Then the bastard giggled again.

"Right." Howard tried to regain some measure of dignity, pulled trousers up, shirt down, and stood as much as he could with one wrist locked to Jason's. "Get the fucking key for these things, then I'm off."

"No." Just like that, Jason was dead serious. He pulled up his own trousers one-handed, stood, and then laced the fingers of their bound hands together. "Don't leave."

"What? Don't leave like you left me last time?" The hurt of the past month surged past embarrassment, past pleasure, and he had to fight not to lash out at Jason.

"I didn't mean to leave." Jason's gaze fell to their hands.

"Then why did you?"

"I was scared." Jason's tone was matter-of-fact.

There it was: truth. And if Jason were telling truths, Howard would follow.

"So was I." He took a breath, inhaling courage from the air. "Are you still scared?"

"Yeah." Jason finally looked up. "But I'm not going to leave this time."

"No?"

"No." He smiled. "This time I'm definitely sticking around."

"Good." Howard nodded firmly. "So, what are we going to do now?"

"First, we need to find the key for these handcuffs." Jason raised their hands together.

"And then?" Howard had a lot of ideas of what they could do once they got out of these bloody handcuffs.

"And then I think we can find an even more interesting use for them, don't you?"

And they did.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [](http://trope-bingo.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**trope_bingo**](http://trope-bingo.dreamwidth.org/) challenge. Trope used: handcuffed together. Thanks, as always, to my first reader, the lovely [soundofthesurf](http://archiveofourown.org/users/soundofthesurf/pseuds/soundofthesurf), and to m. butterfly for making sure all the commas were in the right places.


End file.
